Page 16 of Deep Feelings & Shallow Graves

Or, rather, I wasn’t a jealous man. Not until I pictured her, my blood-slick goddess of pastries and precision, snacking with that sunshine-souled handyman, the two of them elbow-deep in soil and secrets, shovels slicing through rot and memory.

He helped her empty the garden. He dug for her. He doesn’t even know how intimate that is.

And I shouldn’t be mad. She has a system. She’s fair. Disciplined. Dangerously principled. But still my knife cuts a little harder into the cheese. “You trust him?” I ask, too lightly.

She doesn’t miss the tone. Of course she doesn’t. She raises a single brow like she’s assessing how flammable I’d be if I said the wrong thing. “I trust him to be kind,” she says. “And not to ask questions he doesn’t want answers to.”

I hum and lean back, letting that sit between us. That’s not nothing. That’s a hell of a compliment, coming from her. But it’s also not everything. And my teeth itch for everything. “You said there was another date?” I ask, swirling the wine, casual like a cobra in repose.

She grins around a tomato slice. “Carson.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Officer Carson? I shovel cheese in my mouth like it might help.

She sips her wine, cheeks glowing. “That’s complicated.”

“Complicated how?” I ask. I’m trying to sound neutral. I do not succeed.

“He’s a cop,” she says with a wince. “We’ve had…

well, there was coffee. And I ate a cookie while he questioned me.

Then later there was pizza. Zebra cakes.

But he also left snacks at my door, which I didn’t technically eat with him, so maybe that’s one and a half dates?

I don’t know. I like him though. A lot.”

Her math is insane, but I’d kill a man with a spoon to be her final answer.

“And where do I fall in this hierarchy of men and meals?” I ask, spearing another tomato, because stabbing something feels good right now.

She gives me a look like she’s peeling back my ribs to check how fast my heart’s beating. “God. I knew from the moment you turned around in that sub shop that you were trouble. The good kind. I’ve never met anyone like you.”

She sets her wineglass down, fingers tracing the rim absently, almost nervously. “And since we’re being honest, I might as well admit I’ve been picturing you bending me over caskets and pinning me against the walls of this place since I walked in with that pastry box.”

Fuck.

My chair suddenly feels like a restraint device.

“Well,” I rasp, adjusting my position as subtly as possible, “have I red-flagged out? Or are we heading toward rewriting each other’s pleasure thresholds?”

She leans forward slightly, jacket gaping, thighs parted just enough to obliterate every rational thought I’ve ever had, and says, “I think our red flags are so alike, they might cancel each other out. Do you agree?”

I do not remember how to speak. So I just nod. Slowly. Like a man condemned. Like a man blessed.

She dips a graham cracker into the pudding cup and sucks the chocolate off slow like it’s the only thing that matters in the world.

I forget my own name. I forget oxygen. I forget why I haven’t torn the pudding from her hands and poured it directly over her thighs to worship with my fucking teeth.

“Can we have date five?” she asks, licking a smear from the corner of her mouth like she didn’t just casually detonate my sanity. “Maybe not here? Unless you have a coffin kink, because I’m not opposed.”

“I have kinks,” I say, voice like someone’s strangling me with my own tie. “Plural. So very many. When?”

She hums. With her fingers still dusted in graham cracker crumbs like that’s not the hottest shit I’ve seen all week. “Well, I’ve got two dates tomorrow and that’d be rude, so… the next day?”

I nod, immediately, stupidly, possibly drooling. “Let me take you out. A proper date.”

Her head tilts, that curious, hungry look overtaking her expression like she wasn’t expecting the words proper or date to exit my mouth. “Proper?”

“I’m still a gentleman. Mostly,” I say, adjusting my collar before it bursts into flame. “The steakhouse, if you know how to order, is excellent. Then the band in the park after. Friday night.”

She looks genuinely startled. Like I didn’t just spend the last twenty minutes trying not to imagine her bent over my embalming table while I eat whipped cream off her spine.

“Oh,” she says softly. “Oh.”

It’s too much. She’s too much.

She stands and suddenly the room tilts because fuck, she’s closer, warm and sugar-scented and flushed from wine and pleasure. “Can I kiss you goodnight? For real this time? With tongue and teeth?” she asks.

I should say no. I should walk her out like a gentleman and not like the beast I am under this pressed shirt and funeral-home calm. But I want her mouth on mine like salvation.

“Is that acceptable fourth date behavior?” I ask, already moving toward her.

“Yes,” she says, breath catching. “As long as we stay dressed.”

“Unfortunate,” I say, “but doable.”

Our eyes lock. And everything else vanishes.

She steps closer, soft and slow, like she can feel the tight coil of restraint thrumming just under my skin, waiting to snap. One hand lifts to my chest. Just her fingers, brushing the lapel of my jacket like a promise.

I can’t breathe.

Her gaze lifts to mine. “Okay?”

I nod. Just once. Any more and I’ll fall to my knees.

She leans in. And God help me, she doesn’t go for a quick brush of lips or something sweet and polite like last time. No, she parts her mouth and kisses me like she’s tasting something she’s been craving for years.

Heat slams into me.

Her lips are soft but firm, sure in their pressure. She opens to me, invites me, and I fall like a man starved. I kiss her back, deeper like claiming. Her fingers slide up to the back of my neck, curl into my hair, and pull.

I groan. It’s not dignified. It’s not controlled. It’s the sound of a man unmade by a single touch.

My hands don’t even know where to land. One ends up on her waist, the other hovering just above her thigh, shaking with the need to feel more. To grip. To lift her onto the table and make her scream into my mouth.

But I don’t.

I just kiss her. And she kisses me back with slow, drugging pressure that makes the world dissolve.

When she pulls back, barely, like she regrets it, her breath ghosts across my cheek.

I’m panting.

She hums, flushed. “Yep. That’s going in the file.”

“What file?” I rasp.

She grins. “The ‘what we’re doing when I finally stop being polite and ride you like a stolen hearse’ file.”

I swear under my breath.

She pats my chest twice, a mockery of casual affection. “Goodnight, Edgar.”

Then she walks out.

And I just stand there. Drenched in her scent and aching in places poetry hasn’t named yet.

I’m in trouble.